LaPaz Home Learning

Fall has fallen (kerplop!) smack dab onto the Lapaz household, and I don’t know about you, but for me, this always means it is time for all things pumpkin.

Pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread…mmmmm…can’t you just smell the pumpkiny goodness? (Me too, and that’s because I’ve been baking!) I’ve always enjoyed fall baking so much because whipping up a batch of pumpkin, blueberry, or cranberry muffins is as easy as pie. Easier, really. But since going gluten-free, things have gotten suddenly more complicated. Recipes with 10 different kinds of specialty flours, difficult techniques, weird flavors and textures that are just a little…off. *sigh* That can put a real damper on the urge to bake, let me tell you.

But, there was a can of pumpkin in my cupboard and it was calling my name. Taunting me. Challenging me to come up with something so the family and I could enjoy it’s pumpkiny contents.

I resisted its siren call for quite a long time. But I finally caved. And I’m so glad I did (and so are the kids).

Because I’ve been foolin’ around making a mess hard at work in the Lapaz test kitchens and I have at last come up with a gluten-free pumpkin muffin I think is a winner. Easy, tasty, uncomplicated, wonderfully aromatic pumpkin muffins!  And I’d like to share the recipe with you.

Gluten-free Pumpkin Muffins

Dry ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup gluten-free flour blend ( I use Gluten-free Mama’s Almond blend. No more mixing of 25 different exotic flours. This has simplified my life like you wouldn’t believe.)
• 1t baking powder
• 1t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 1t cinnamon (or more)
• 1/2 t allspice (or cloves)
• 1 t ginger (YES!)
• 1/2-1 t nutmeg, depending on your feelings about nutmeg. I use as much as I can get away with.
• 1t xanthan gum

Wet ingredients:

• 1/2 cup veggie oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup unsweetened pumpkin (fresh or canned)
• 1/3 cup water
• 1t vanilla

Heat oven to 350. Whip up the wet ingredients, stir in the dry. Pour into muffin tins (I used paper liners  in one batch, and just sprayed Pam in the muffin cups in another batch.They both came out fine, though the Pam batch rose higher and looked nicer for some reason). Bake for about 25 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Made about 16 muffins.

Enjoy!

A note on gluten-free flour blends: I’ve tried a few with mixed results (ex: Bob’s Red Mill GF all purpose baking mix tastes like barf). I’ve tried mixing my own with several different recipes (way, way too complicated).  And I have definitely settled on Gluten-free Mama’s Almond blend. Easy-peasy and tastes great. I highly recommend it.

I am glad to report that our move back into unschooling for Superboy was exactly the right move. He is once again enthusiastically pursuing projects of his own choosing, and impressing me daily with his capabilities.

Anyone who has ever wondered what unschooling a teen looks like, here is one version. These are his subjects, totally his choice:

1. Spanish–taking a class at the local high school. He has had only one class meeting so far, and is very much enjoying it. His teacher is enthusiastic and welcoming to homeschoolers, he has several friends in the class, and I think he will do just fine.

2. Photography: This is an art form he has enjoyed as a hobby for awhile, but now wants to learn much more in depth. He got a sweet new camera for his 16th birthday:

So now he has no excuses!

He is using the assignments at Outdoor Photographer as his weekly assignments, and he is knocking them out beautifully, meanwhile building his portfolio. Here are his first two pieces:

This is for the assignment “abstract” :

And this for the challenge “summer flowers”:

All he needs now is Photoshop so he can learn to edit his images like a pro. We are currently saving up for that investment.

3. Graphic design–he wants to learn more about this art form/career option, so when I stumbled upon this book:

I knew it would be perfect for him. He snatched it up and is tackling the challenges with vigor. Challenge 1 had him design a logo for himself, which he did, and applied it to a business card and letterhead. I think he did a great job. It is purple and artsy and very much HIM.

4. Computer Animation: I had no clue how to help him with this, so we did a little searching and stumbled upon some open source ( free!) computer 3-D graphics and animation software called Blender.  We downloaded it and Superboy has been watching some excellent YouTube tutorials in order to learn how to use it. Pretty amazing stuff!

5. Literature: As long as he is reading something worthy, we are good and I won’t interfere with his reading choices. Right now he is reading Waiting For Snow in Havana, the memoir of an “Operation Pedro Pan” Cuban exile. Definitely worthy. I’m reading it next!

6. Calculus: Superboy and I will be learning this one together using the Teaching Company DVD set titled “Calculus Made Clear.” Lets hope the title is accurate! My old brain hasn’t tackled higher math in a while! But I am taking this opportunity to learn something I never got around to and am looking forward to it. We start this next week. Wish us luck!

7. Physics: Superboy is reading his way through the Flying Circus of Physics and picking out projects from Make magazine to gain himself a physics credit. I personally can’t wait to see what contraptions he comes up with! His first choice: a Wimshurst Spark Generator. Talk about ambitious! Yikes!

And that is about it! I have a few tricks up my sleeve I am going to entice him with after giving him time to get a bit more settled into his routine. But for now, all is well with the boy!

Tell me, how are your teens enjoying their new school year?

In a bit of a contrast to our public school friends and family, who are all aflutter with back-to-school hoopla, JBug and I will be slipping quietly into the year by spending the first few days with just a few fun projects. Because we are all ninja like that.

The first thing she will be doing is to spend some time decorating her notebooks, composition books, and clipboards, etc to personalize and jazz them up a bit. Who likes a plain-jane clipboard, anyway? Exactly. Plus, it’s an excellent excuse to break out the art supplies on day one. (As if we needed an excuse.)

The other thing will be kicking off her geography studies with a fun project based on the book Me On the Map by Joan Sweeny. She might be making a little circle book like the one on this site: Finally in First, or she might just do the drawings in her geography notebook, to start that off with a bang. The rest of the notebook will be filled with drawings/clippings/maps, etc of geography goodness using the book Geography from A to Z as a reference, along with pics from Nat Geo magazines, the internets, and our travels. Should be fun and relevant, considering our various wanderings. (Can you name 2 archipelagos upon which we have lived??? How about the 5  major biomes we’ve called home???)

I have a few other awesome new resources I want to share with you guys, plus I want to tell you all about the fabulous stuff Superboy is getting into, but I’ll save that for another time. When you least expect it.

Planning for JBug may be an exercise in perspective…

But planning for Superboy is an exercise in letting go.

THE GOOD

Superboy has been unschooled, for the most part, since I pulled him from school in the third grade. Sure we’ve done some awesome unit-studies, some cool notebooking, but  it’s all been super-fun, child-led, and completely positive. Superboy, with his obsessions and passions has been a posterboy for unschooling, as far as I am concerned.

THE BAD

Then last year came along .

Superboy turned 15 and suddenly got angsty. (You know. Like a teenager?)

And I got antsy. Instead of taking it in stride, keeping my perspective, I let my confidence in unschooling slip. And instead of making the effort to find a way to make things better within the framework that had been so successful for him up until then, I panicked and I threw it all away and replaced it with something new and foreign to him.

Thus began our Super-Structured Year.

And while this was a GREAT thing for JBug, it was not such a great thing for Superboy.

Don’t get me wrong, he learned a LOT this past year and it was far from all negative. But I have noticed a change in his attitude toward learning that I do not like one little bit. Mainly that he has bought into the belief that he is no longer in charge of his own learning. That somebody just needs to tell him what to do and he will do it. That school is something he needs to just get through so he can move on to the good stuff.

(can you feel my heart breaking just a little bit?)

THE UNSCHOOLED

So what am I going to do about this?

I have 2 more years with this boy until college or the Coast Guard or WHATEVER takes him away from me and I aim to make the most of them.

How?

By making the least of me.

Time for me to back off and let him find himself again.

Time to step back into my supporting role and encourage him to become the star of his own show, once again.

Time to let go of my plans, my goals, my dreams and help him find out what his are.

Time to, in a word, unschool.

Where, exactly will this all lead us? I have no idea. But I can tell you, knowing Superboy, it is bound to be interesting at least.

Planning school for JBug is an exercise in perspective.

As a parent it is sometimes hard for me to admit that my children  have weaknesses. I mean, in my heart they are all perfect, right?
But as JBug’s teacher…well…lets just say that those weaknesses make themselves all too obvious. She struggles to read, math is a mystery of epic proportions, logic eludes her, and spelling? Don’t ask.
And these weaknesses cannot just be ignored or I do her no favors, educationally. I need to recognize and address them.
BUT
I cannot let weaknesses define her, or my relationship to her. I can’t and I won’t. I cannot hyper-focus on her weaknesses or I run the risk of letting them color everything we do, every interaction, at every turn. And no one wants to have their faults constantly laid bare, a continuous reminder of just exactly how they don’t quite measure up. I know I wouldn’t.

Because she also has strengths and gifts and a thousand things about her that are right and good and perfect, and it would be a shame to miss them because I can only see what “needs fixing”.

So, in thinking about JBug’s education,  I need to plan a course of study that respects her for what she is: a beautiful person, with abundant gifts, and a sacred purpose as yet hidden from us.

I need to see her as God sees her, as my mother’s heart sees her, in all her loveliness and strength and THAT…

That is the starting point from which all planning should flow.

Not from weakness, but from beauty and strength.

And just how does one plan with beauty and strength as a starting point?

First off, by creating a list of strengths and letting them be the scaffolding upon which everything else is built.

For JBug, her strengths are her love of nature and a good story, her artistic ability and quirky way of looking at things, her big, generous heart, and her practical nature.

So her curriculum will be built around those things. Those good, beautiful, things that make JBug strong.

JBug loves nature so there will be nature study daily: reading stories, drawing, exploring, observing. Happily, it is a strength the two of us share.

JBug loves a good story so we will read lots of stories: Stories of history,  Shakespeare, dragons and fairy-tales to be sure, but also stories of math, grammar, and science.  (And through those stories I’ve no doubt so much will be learned.)

JBug is artistic, so she will have opportunities to study great artists, imitate their works, and express her own unique view of the world on a daily basis.

JBug is generous and loving and wants very badly to know and serve God, so we will read stories of the saints and draw our inspiration from their example. And the Bible will become a dear friend.

JBug is practical and wants to DO things so we will cook, we will craft, and we will build things that are of use to us.

And through it all, by focusing on her strengths, gradually her weaknesses, which really are so small in the long run, become even smaller.

Until eventually, without us even noticing, they quietly disappear.

And that’s the beauty of it.

Yep. I’m there.

And rather than posting here I’ve been playing there.

It really is pretty neat, with its circles and hang-outs and mutes and all. You should totally meet me there.

If not, I promise I’ll be back to posting here, as soon as this little addiction wears off.

So I promised I’d be back with a post about my inner turmoil– The epic battle between Charlotte Mason and John Holt (aka Unschooling) that is currently being waged in my psyche.

Why?

Who knows. Maybe in writing out my thoughts I might actually help someone. Maybe there is someone else out there that struggles to find a balance between planning and letting go. That sees the similarities between “setting their feet in a wide room” and “strewing,”  yet also readily acknowledges the differences.

Actually what I’m secretly hoping is that by writing out my thoughts they will somehow magically become a little clearer—to me.

The way I see it, the two philosophies have a lot in common, so we will start there. Charlotte Mason and Unschooling both stress the parent/teacher’s role should be as guide/mentor, not fount-of-all-knowledge. They both emphasize that we not get between the child and the ideas by pre-digesting them for the child. They both value letting the child make his/her own connections to the great ideas just waiting out there to be discovered instead of just jumping in and pointing out all of the connections for them. Both philosophies value relationship, discussion, and respect between parent/teacher and child, most especially in the idea that a child is a born person, deserving of respect, not just for who (s)he will become, but for who (s)he already is.

I like all of those things.

And that’s quite a bit in common, right?

There are, of course, major differences. The main ones being that CM had a planned curriculum, assignments, lessons (though short) and tests, while unschooling tends to look down on such things, letting the child take the lead, and never “requiring” but only “inspiring.”

Honestly, I can appreciate both approaches (though I do not and will not ever “test” my children).

I love the idea of unschooling. Of letting my children’s interests lead the way in our learning adventures. I fully appreciate that they can and DO learn from everything they do and everyone they meet. I’ve seen the powerful learning that happens when you get your hands dirty doing something you love.  I agree that more can be gained by the reading of a good book than many a lecture, and that a lively discussion can tell me more about what my child is thinking than any set of reading comprehension questions ever devised. I love rabbit trails, spontaneity, and the freedom of following your heart rather than a schedule.

But…

I also have seen the fruits of a few excellent, well-timed, pre-planned lessons. I’ve seen the progress made by requiring a bit of copywork. I’ve experienced the benefits, especially to JBug, of a steady diet of simple, short, tailored instruction. I’ve come to appreciate the value of sometimes just pushing through the bad to get to the good.  Sometimes. Not always.  And narration…that really does work. Like magic.

So,  although I am truly an unschooler at heart, I also have an appreciation for the benefits of a Charlotte Mason-type education (as well as Montessori in the younger years, but that’s another post) and I absolutely think she has some things very, very right.

And to complicate this whole mess is the fact that I am in charge of the education of two very different children with very different strengths and needs. I have in Superboy what I think of as the ultimate unschooling candidate–naturally inquisitive, laid-back but full of passions and a ready will to follow them.  Add to that a natural inclination against deadlines and schedules.  And I also have JBug who would quite frankly flounder without a good bit of hand-holding, who needs things spelled out to her in a way that I have never before experienced and don’t fully understand, and who I have seen blossom like never before during our Charlotte Mason year.

What’s a Mom to do?

I think what I have come to realize (and am still working out in my brain) is that when school is life and life is school, things are not always cut-and-dry, black and white. In fact they rarely are. What works for one child in one instant may not work for the next child or in the next instant. And as parents who care way down deep in our souls about our children’s education, we cannot afford to be inflexible, boxed in, closed to change. We must be ready for just about anything and that can’t happen if we put on philosophical blinders.

They say there are no straight lines in nature and though I know that isn’t strictly true, I can appreciate the sentiment. Life is messy– full of sudden turns, slippery bits, and rough edges. And so education, being a reflection of life, is also messy.  I may never be able to fit it neatly into any particular box sealed with a pretty label.

And, you know… I kind of like it that way.

(stay tuned for a post about how I envision all this messiness playing out in our little homeschool by the sea)

I know it’s been awhile. I’ve been in one of those blogging funks I get in every once in a while. You know the ones, where you feel like you have nothing to say worth saying so you just shut up for awhile to keep from prattling away about nothing.
Sort of like I’m doing now.
Anyway, just wanted to let folks know that I have not abandoned this space entirely. I plan on coming back with a vengeance very soon. I feel my brain starting to bubble up with things I want to discuss. Most especially the epic battle being waged in my psyche between the educational paradigms of Charlotte Mason and John Holt.
I’m working through it.
So don’t abandon me altogether, okay?

Can you blame us if on days like this:

We want to do a lot less of this:

and a lot more of this:

and this:

and this:

Yeah. I think school is just about out for the year.

How about you?

We’ve had such a good time on our Swan Lake rabbit trail. Who knew what a little walk to the lake could inspire? We’ve learned about Swans, geese, and ugly ducklings, we’ve watched ballets (Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty) and now… Degas and pastel dancers!

(The Star. Edgar Degas)

As we were watching Swan Lake it just occurred to me that a natural side-trail would be to take a look at Degas and his beautiful  pictures of  ballet dancers.

We hit the library and found several books on Degas, and watched a movie as well. Then we picked up our chalk pastels and made some dancers of our own!

(In order to have a model to look at, we put  the Swan Lake ballet DVD in the player and froze the action at a good spot.)

I had to do a bit of experimenting to figure out a technique that would work for the age group I’m working with (5 and 9).I had a lot of fun working with the pastels, something I’ve never really messed with before.  But when I say “messed” I mean it. Boy, are those chalk pastels messy!  I had a tremendous amount of trouble keeping my work neat. I knew right away it would be a challenge for the kids, especially for JackJack.

(my humble attempt at capturing Swan Lake in pastels)

Anyway, due to the inherent messiness of the chalk, I settled on a technique for the kiddos that  I thought would work pretty well.

• First, on dark blue cardstock I sketched an outline for JackJack, while JBug sketched her own dancer. (I had them do only one dancer, to keep it simple and as clean as possible)
• Then I had them draw a few heavy lines with chalk pastel.
• and then I had them smear the chalk with their fingers to make the arms, legs, and tutus.

Embrace the mess, rather than try to fight it, I say!
Here’s a close-up of the technique:

It looks messy up close, but from a little distance it’s actually a nice effect!

Again, I sketched the outline for him, but JackJack did the color and smear.

Here is JBug’s, which she did all by herself!

All in all, I’d say I recommend trying the smearing technique. It was messy, but it worked fairly well, and the kids really enjoyed having permission to get messy.